WHEN IS A YEAR LEAP?

The true length of a year is 365.242 days. Because this is not
an integral number, any calendar which has years of a fixed length
cannot maintain synchronism with true solar time over any lengthy
period. The calendar now used by many nations of the world, the
Gregorian calendar, assigns 365 days to most years. It is then
necessary to add an extra day every fourth year to keep time
straight. However, this would only maintain synchronism if the
year were 365.25 days long. Because it is a little less than this,
it is necessary to drop the leap year approximately once each
century.

There are three rules which determine whether a year is leap (ie
has an extra day). These are:

- If a year is divisible by 4 it is leap unless,

- If a year is divisible by 100 it is not leap unless,

- If a year is divisible by 400 it is leap.

Many people are not aware of the third rule, although it is this
rule that made the year 2000 a leap year. To make leap year
determination an automated process, a simple QBASIC (Quick Basic)
program is presented below.